On Halloween day, after just four hours of deliberation, a retired senior vice president at Israeli-based Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd. (MZTF) was acquitted in Los Angeles federal court on charges he helped U.S. customers conceal their assets from the Internal Revenue Service.

Shokrollah Baravarian, 82, was acquitted of charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and helping Mizrahi clients prepare false tax returns. Prosecutors claimed Baravarian helped clients who opened accounts in Israel, didn’t declare them to the IRS and accessed money through loans from the Los Angeles branch. The jury was not persuaded.

The U.S. has been campaigning heavily to curtail offshore tax evasion. The IRS, through the US Department of Justice, has charged more than 70 taxpayers and three dozen offshore bankers, lawyers and advisers in offshore tax evasions schemes. More than 45,000 Americans have avoided criminal prosecution by voluntarily disclosing their offshore accounts to the IRS, paying $6.5 bil…

On Halloween day, after just four hours of deliberation, a retired senior vice president at Israeli-based Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd. (MZTF) was acquitted in Los Angeles federal court on charges he helped U.S. customers conceal their assets from the Internal Revenue Service.

Shokrollah Baravarian, 82, was acquitted of charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and helping Mizrahi clients prepare false tax returns. Prosecutors claimed Baravarian helped clients who opened accounts in Israel, didn’t declare them to the IRS and accessed money through loans from the Los Angeles branch. The jury was not persuaded.

The U.S. has been campaigning heavily to curtail offshore tax evasion. The IRS, through the US Department of Justice, has charged more than 70 taxpayers and three dozen offshore bankers, lawyers and advisers in offshore tax evasions schemes. More than 45,000 Americans have avoided criminal prosecution by voluntarily disclosing their offshore accounts to the IRS, paying $6.5 bil…

In efforts to increase offshore tax compliance, the IRS just made brand new changes to its current offshore disclosure programs. The streamlined procedures have been expanded to accommodate a wider group of U.S. taxpayers who have unreported foreign financial accounts. This is a very good thing because now more people can use the procedures than could have before.

The original streamlined procedures announced in 2012 were available only to non-resident, non-filers. Taxpayer submissions were subject to different degrees of review based on the amount of the tax due and the taxpayer’s response to a “risk” questionnaire. The expanded streamlined procedures are available to a wider population of U.S. taxpayers living outside the country and, for the first time, to certain U.S. taxpayers residing in the United States. The changes include:

•Eliminating a requirement that the taxpayer have $1,500 or less of unpaid tax per year; •Eliminating the required risk questionnaire; •Requiring the taxpaye…

In efforts to increase offshore tax compliance, the IRS just made brand new changes to its current offshore disclosure programs. The streamlined procedures have been expanded to accommodate a wider group of U.S. taxpayers who have
unreported foreign financial accounts. This is a very good thing because now more people can use the procedures than could have before.

The original streamlined procedures announced in 2012
were available only to non-resident, non-filers. Taxpayer submissions were
subject to different degrees of review based on the amount of the tax due and
the taxpayer’s response to a “risk” questionnaire. The expanded streamlined procedures are available to a
wider population of U.S. taxpayers living outside the country and, for the
first time, to certain U.S. taxpayers residing in the United States. The
changes include:

•Eliminating a requirement that the taxpayer have $1,500 or less of
unpaid tax per year; •Eliminating the required risk questionnaire; •Requiring the taxpay…

The Wilson Tax Law Group is a tax firm serving the Newport Beach and Yorba Linda areas. This blog is meant to be both a service to our clients, where we can post IRS, California Franchise Tax Board, FBAR, and Orange County property tax news that may be of interest to them. It will also be a place where we will post on topics that are of interest to us and other tax professionals following hot tax topics of the moment. Sometimes, those areas will intersect, because we handle cutting edge cases including tax audits and tax planning for marijuana dispensaries (sales tax and income tax) and defending taxpayers in criminal investigations of the FBAR penalties. This blog will be constantly evolving, so please give us feedback in the comments section if you think of future topics you would like to read more about.

The Wilson Tax Law Group is a tax firm serving the Newport Beach and Yorba Linda areas. This blog is meant to be both a service to our clients, where we can post IRS, California Franchise Tax Board, FBAR, and Orange County property tax news that may be of interest to them. It will also be a place where we will post on topics that are of interest to us and other tax professionals following hot tax topics of the moment. Sometimes, those areas will intersect, because we handle cutting edge cases including tax audits and tax planning for marijuana dispensaries (sales tax and income tax) and defending taxpayers in criminal investigations of the FBAR penalties. This blog will be constantly evolving, so please give us feedback in the comments section if you think of future topics you would like to read more about.